What exactly is thin content?

Below is a video from Google where Matt Cutts describes what they are filtering out. That video is also available via the link in the prior paragraph.

I know someone who works in the industry and on behalf of their clients only write and publish posts of 500+ words in the belief that shorter posts are thin content. And this in spite of the fact that more frequent shorter posts attract your audience faster than fewer longer posts.

I know someone else who shares the same belief but only writes and publishes posts longer than 1,000 words. They just write and publish fewer of them.

Thin Content is…..

I’m going out on a limb here because I too am interpreting what G0ogle says.

Thin content is a post that doesn’t actually say anything.

For an extreme example of this idea think of the skilled politician who when asked a serious and complex question talks for 3 to 5 minutes without ever actually saying anything meaningful and definitely without answering the question.

We’ve all landed on and seen web pages like that.

Although the human mind likes the “5 best…..” style of headline, you do your audience a disservice when you follow that headline with a message that is so obvious everyone already knows it.